The best City Planning & Urban Development books: Reddit reviews

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Those are striking visualizations and help understand the cities in which we live.

This segregation didn't happen by accident by the way. Richard Rothstein published 'The Color of Law' and it describes how local, state, and federal housing policy is responsible for most of the segregation we see today.

These segregationist zoning laws are still in force today and we are becoming even more segregated, although nowadays it is increasing more by class than race.

The Color of Law is a great book that covers all the strategies used to keep neighborhoods segregated after discriminating based on race was no longer legal, including how HOAs were used.

i didn't know this until i read The Color of Law, but back in the early 20th century the popularity of personal automobiles skyrocketed to such a size that cities simply weren't able to keep up with the congestion they caused. the number of people who owned cars essentially doubled every year for a while and traffic was a plague. it's one of the reasons why cities embraced the idea of widening roads and eventually building highways so much in the first place, even back then they thought doing so would solve congestion

This is the syllogism they are using.

A) Black people use this social program B) Republicans want to cut this social program

Therefore, Republicans want to cut social programs because Black people use them.

So if you want to cut welfare you hate black people. If you point out that the large majority of people who use welfare in America are not black, so why you hear, "DIBRPORITONALLHY BLACK." These people have no idea what a proportion is or what it should mean. Ask someone, "What is the proper proportion that something should be of another thing?" They have no idea and can't unpack it.

Recommended reading.

Bonus points, if instead of talking about disproportionate black people they instead say "people of color" you can ask them how they got so racist that they would use an old-timey racist phrase like "colored people" AND lump in all races into one group as if Cubans, and Italians, and Arabs and Indians and African Americans and Koreans are all the same, have no special identity that matters to them and their only feature is not being white. Sounds like a white supremacist talking point, doesn't it?

Edit: People should actually just read this book instead of launching misinformed and unrelated arguments against what I said. It turns out the professional academic goes into a little more detail and cites extensive sources, unlike my exceedingly brief reddit comment. Literally, go read a book. It's very short, because half of it is citations.

> Still wondering why anyone really cares where people choose to live.

Actually, where people live is one of the biggest drivers of life outcomes. If you're born in KCK instead of Leawood - your probable life outcomes is much worse.

At one time, segregation was official city/state/fed policy, which subsidized the development of all-white suburbs (like Prairie Village was one of the first) and movement of people from urban areas to the suburbs - aka 'white flight'. Today, we're still living with white flight. If there were a middle to upper income suburb of Kansas City that were 88% black, do you think many white people would choose to move there? Me neither.

Check out Richard Rothstein's book "The Color of Law", or his lectures on YouTube. Great history and info about the relationship between housing segregation and life outcomes in the US.

As the Vox illustrates, segregation is still going on today (it's actually getting worse) due to policies like zoning laws and drive to prevent low-income housing and apartment complexes from being improved in middle-upper income cities, resulting in low income minorities living in a small number of areas in the metro (as illustrated by the original Vox piece map).

sometimes I wonder, its literally physically embedded in our society. if you have heard of "red lining", basically on the basis of discriminatory law and practice, colored folks sequestered into poor housing. There is a book about it apparently too, the Law of Color:

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

(read the first review there, its just nuts how jacked up an affect it all has)

on top of this, struggling to even go to a college because of one's skin color, and all the other historical challenges. How will we change embedded physical geographical areas built upon oppression and prejudice? I have no idea.

There is a short clip on youtube about it basically:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e68CoE70Mk8

'Only' is a bit strong, but there were numerous programs which encouraged the development of suburban, single family homes - specifically for whites. The Color of Law offers a thorough, policy based exploration of the racialization and segregation of housing in the US, and also deals with those policies which tended to encourage home ownership and low density zoning.

Related NPR interview of the author of 'The Color of Law'

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

Here's a "quick" primer

^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

This is an excellent summary. White Americans got success by making sure the lowest rungs of the economic ladder were full of black people. It was done intentionally with laws and descrimination at all levels of society, city, state and federal.

Thanks for the video; I'll have to watch it later.

I noticed the Globe article this morning. Jeff Speck ("Mr. Walkability", and a Brookline resident- https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0865477728) apparently designed or helped design the project

That's bullshit. Read about the development of New York's freeway system under the guidance of Robert Moses in the last century, captured in Robert Caro's Power Broker. Every time Moses went back to the "We need to build more highways" well, it just made the problem of traffic worse, and it was never, *never* about making things better for the city, but to secure his legacy and keep his authority / power intact.

The solution -- better support and improvement for public transit -- is what the city needed, but Moses vision of the city and its needs -- more freeways -- was a product of his own narrow imagination, dated by decades by the time he really got going with freeways. It was something for rich folk.

Here's a book by an actual expert on the topic--

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

It has all the things your token black conservatives won't mention.

I don't believe in busing. Instead we must address the lack of diversity inherent in these neighborhoods.

The lack of diversity is by design and is encoded in municipal zoning codes that are set up in such a way to exclude poorer people from certain areas.

Take West Cambridge or Belmont for instance. In these areas it's almost all expensive single family home; plus one needs a car to get around. Cheaper type of homes like apartments are illegal and buses don't run often or at all. This keeps out poorer people and increases segregation.

This was done on purpose. Richard Rothstein wrote a whole book about the topic called The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

To address segregation, we must reform zoning, allow plentiful housing, and build neighborhoods where people of different backgrounds can live together.

It's almost like patterns of intentional racial discrimination in housing are responsible for the patterns of racial segregation we see today.

Continually impressed at the brain rot among so-called Planning intelligentsia.

Imagine writing a book about the damage done by government preferences regarding neighborhood racial composition and going "they were just the WRONG preferences!!!"

The long history of intentional racial discrimination in housing. mean that it is both a race issue and a class issue.

The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein

Fantastic read if you're interested in all the racist shitty things the government has done to black people regarding housing. It is amazing how intentional racist our government was, and either allowed or forced others to be.

>I recommend listening to Uncle Sam God Damn by Brother Ali. Sums up what I think about the US pretty well.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll have to check it out. I'm no stranger to reading about our shitty side.

Got into a debate with my neighbor the other day because he thought, "the people protesting just want things to change so fast! It's not that bad!" So I bought him a copy of The Color of Law. So many people have no clue about this country and it's past. it's pathetic.

>If anyone is Gonna safe us, it's gonna be the US by making us an interplanetary species.

Let's hope we can keep it together to make it that far.

White's only deeds used to be common. The effects are still in force in Philadelphia, even if the deeds are not.

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is an excellent intro to the topic. It is a very engaging book, meaty not dry, utterly fascinating and depressing.

It's an interesting subject.

One factor is that the black population tends to be younger, which has an impact.

Thomas Sowell went into this in more depth in his book, "Discrimination and Disparities."

The book changed my perspective, which had previously been that our institutions were riddled with so much racial bias and corruption as to be almost useless, to something more tempered.

There's definitely discrimination at play. But for a real, more permanent, more effective, and faster solution, we will need to look deeper. But there are other factors that may make it appear worse than it is. And these factors should inform the solution.

For instance, banks owned by blacks are actually less likely to make loans to black borrowers, and that's the case in both single-factor and multi-factor analysis.

The point is, to win the fight against racism, not fight people or companies that simply happen to look racist, when, in fact, they may be applying policies that have nothing to do with racism.

Because the situation is not always as it seems at first glance.

Send me a message if you'd like to talk about this, because my family and I have been discussing it, back and forth, for some time.

You're coming from a good place, but everyone who is advising you to take a deeper look at the ENTIRE situation is right. Just because YOUR family did it, does not imply it is possible for ALL in a similar situation. Please take a look at this book, if you have any intention of trying to understand it from a educational point of view - https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

Our August 2018 Book of The Month

“Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City” by Antero Pietila

Baltimore

Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century, dooming American cities to ghettoization. The Federal Housing Administration continued discriminatory housing policies even into the 1960s, long after civil rights legislation.

This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of white flight after World War II, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century.

The events are real, and so are the heroes and villains. Mr. Pietila's narrative centers on the human side of residential real estate practices, whose discriminatory tools were the same everywhere: restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting, predatory lending.

Amazon

Our August 2018 Book of The Month “Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City”

by Antero Pietila

Baltimore

https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437

Jeff Speck has some good introductory writing on the topic. Check out Step 5 of Part II under the heading "Keep it complicated"

That PDF is kinda janky, so here's an Amazon link if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Walkable-City-Downtown-Save-America/dp/0865477728/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=walkable+city&qid=1563914434&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Excerpt: > Welcome to the world of risk homeostasis, a very real place that exists well outside the blinkered gaze of the traffic engineering profession. Risk homeostasis describes how people automatically adjust their behavior to maintain a comfortable level of risk. It explains why poisoning deaths went up after childproof caps were introduced—people stopped hiding their medicines—and why the deadliest intersections in America are typically the ones you can navigate with one finger on the steering wheel and a cellphone at your ear. [9]

>I said nothing about race. Your comment is nothing but racial. There are industrious individuals that are black, white, and brown profiting from revitalizing neglected areas. I love it. Success knows no color, but green.

There are certainly people of all backgrounds doing their best to make it in this world.

At least in an American context, it ABSOLUTELY makes sense to bring up race, as the tools that made the Black Community overwhelming poor and overwhelmingly shut-out of home ownership were based on racial public and private policy.

If you're up for a read or list, The Color of Law goes into great detail as to how this came to be the case.

Discrimination and Disparities https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541645634/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_4kCuFb699QVY1

Her entire argument is trashed by a much more intelligent man than her. Thomas Sowell is the boss when it comes to these topics.

Quote him and watch them call him a racist. Then drop a picture of him. 😂

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein was assigned as part of a class in college, as someone born and raised in the US it was frankly embarrassing how ignorant I was on the topic of systemic racism. I highly encourage anyone who wants to learn more on the blatant segregation of the 20th century and its effects in the contemporary to read this book. It's even on sale on Amazon right now.

People would never admit it, but you're right. People need to educate themselves why minority communities in this country are too often left disenfranchised and poor- its from systemic racism.

Here is a good starting read if anyone wants to check it out.

Title: "Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner: $750,000."

"Last summer, Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, welcomed an appraiser into their house in Baltimore, hoping to take advantage of historically low interest rates and refinance their mortgage.

They believed that their house — improved with a new $5,000 tankless water heater and $35,000 in other renovations — was worth much more than the $450,000 that they paid for it in 2017. Home prices have been on the rise nationwide since the pandemic; in Baltimore, they have gone up 42 percent in the past five years, according to Zillow.com.

But 20/20 Valuations, a Maryland appraisal company, put the home’s value at $472,000, and in turn, loanDepot, a mortgage lender, denied the couple a refinance loan."

literally got denied a refinance because of it

"Months after that first appraisal, the couple applied for another refinance loan, removed family photos and had a white male colleague — another Johns Hopkins professor — stand in for them. The second appraiser valued the house at $750,000."

Again though, this isn't "new" and has been reported on and studied quite a lot, especially in the past years.

Just within this very narrow direction this book goes into some good detail on how the government has been screwing over black communities even long after the Jim Crow era https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

Maybe not the type of Progressives that San Francisco has: Book: San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. Much exaggerated as a generalization, but applies well to S.F.

Do you not believe that people locked up in mental wards are force fed drugs?

The solution isn't a harder government hand, its a smart approach. Look I agree with your desire for a safer streets, id just rather achieve it though other methods. first lets try better solutions like the ones proposed in San Fransicko, then lets maybe actually allow people to protect themselves....